What's new with LBC - Summer 2019

07/17/2019

by Admin Admin

Welcome to "What's new with LBC" for the Summer of 2019. This spring we did a dash across the country to little effect except for a lovely evening in Lincoln, Nebraska (and a couple days learning to use a chainsaw). Yay for small college towns in the Midwest with a receptive audience! We are trying to start making some video reviews. We plan on some being done by the end of summer. We have produced a new issue of Black Seed, and hope to have issue 8 out by the end of the year--perhaps it will be organized at the Indigenous Anarchist Conference in August in Flagstaff AZ. We have three new book titles for your edification.

New Titles

Insurrection Omnibus

''Insurrection'' was a magazine that attempted to articulate a revolutionary perspective in English that largely existed only in Italian (1982 - 1989). It was the work of Jean Weir (Elephant Editions), Alfredo Bonanno, and a host of anon. In their own words...

Capitalism contains deep contradictions that push it towards processes of adjustment and evolution aimed at avoiding the periodic crises that afflict it; but we cannot cradle ourselves waiting for these crises. When they happen they will be welcomed if they respond to the requirements for accelerating the elements of the insurrectional process. In the meantime, for our part, we are preparing ourselves and the exploited masses for insurrection.

In this sense we consider the time is always ripe for the next insurrection. Better a failed insurrection than a hundred vacillations that cause the failure of a hundred occasions from which it might have been possible for the final revolution to break out. We are therefore against those who say that the recent defeat of the revolutionary movement should make us reflect and conclude that we should be more prudent. We consider that the time for insurrection has come precisely because it is always time to fight, whereas procrastinating is useful only for capital. To prepare for insurrection means to prepare the subjective conditions (personal and material) which consent a specific anarchist minority to create the indispensable circumstances for the development of the insurrectional process. Although insurrection is a mass phenomenon, and would risk aborting immediately if it were not, its beginning is always the result of the action of a decided minority, a handful of brave ones capable of attacking the nerve centres of the partial objective to be reached. We must be very clear on this point. The tasks of the anarchist struggle against power can be extremely varied, but all—in our opinion—must be coherently directed towards preparing the insurrection.

In this insurrectionary spirit we publish this omnibus edition (everything short of some 30-year-old, time-sensitive reportbacks).

The Spectacle of Society

Everything is Under Review

Popular culture seems to insist that each of us takes positions all the time, pro or con, yes or no, either/or. Most of these are choices between two equally stupid options. Wrap yourself in a ﬂag, believe this or that about sex, drugs, responsibility, and fle sharing, and shut your mind. Take one side or another in difficult questions about living in a complicated world that only increases in its complexity. The constant drum of celebrity gossip, manufactured outrage, and drama that completely obfuscates important things is deafening. We are deaf.

This cacophony-induced deafness prevents us hearing the screams of the people of Northern Africa or of Rust-Belt America. It prevents us from taking our own problems seriously, or slowing down from the relentless grind of work, bills, or hearing anything outside the drone of mundanity.

But there are moments when you pause, when you exert your will onto your life for long enough to evaluate the options you are confronted with, and choose none of the above. The first time you see a fork in the road and choose a knife is the moment you realize that you have the power, and ability, to put everything under review. It is your cautious intelligence that frees you from the cacophony of simplification and allows you to begin to question.

When we are not battened down by our shitty jobs or the qualities of our limitations–inability to communicate, lack of resources,

alienation–we can come to our own conclusions. This moment, and the decision to ponder, is precious. Perhaps this is the most precious time we have in our adult lives, when we make real decisions about where ends the world (large and small) and we begin. Where we decide about the things we feel strong enough to say NO to. It is this no that drives the producers of the Anvil.

This project of review essays, at best, uses something real, something labored over and shared with the world, as a way to speak both to that labor and to something else. It could be that a review of the latest pop album addresses the depth and composition of the alienation one feels, or the soaring joy of the ephemeral moment the album demarcates.

Xoros

I want to resist portraying this as a coming-of-age story set in the Greek anarchist space, but it definitely is that. It is also a story of irony and naivete coming up against the cold and boring—and later thrilling and confusing—immersion into “the real world” and what a fantastic and terrifying place it is.

By the beer shop, a couple anarchists sit, dressed in all black, asking, “why did they have to come to our neighborhood?” There is political talk, talk of sex, and too many cigarettes, and of homes, lots of talk of homes. The square is home to some of the people, others came here for jobs that didn’t exist or to escape bombs, and found refuge in the bomb center. Exarchia is a bomb in the middle of Athens. Not only are there plenty of molotovs hurtling through the nights, but the area is gunpowder. Radical ideas, stories, connections, safe houses, and a ‘fuck you’ attitude combine with a complete disillusionment with the government and economic warfare being enacted plainly, a spit in the face, have made Exarchia fertile.

A Note About the Site:

In our continuing (if slow) process of making the website better and easier to use, we now have categories by publisher, which makes searching by publisher possible. Search functions are hard! But we're getting there. Enjoy!

Enemy Combatant

Enemy Combatant: unconventional explorations into anti-authoritarian thought and existence, bring to light forgotten and unknown outliers from history, anti-civilization theory, anarchism, individualism, and egoism, like Tsuji Jun, Eliphalet Kimball, and Arnulf Overland. This project promotes active creation of our realities, through humor, anti-political thought and actions, and relearning/remembering the lessons of people who live now and who have gone before us.

We feel that revolt today means insisting on enjoying life, so here is no belly-aching or belittling moral condemnation. As far as we're concerned the only organizing to do is a refining of our revolts to maximize the time, space, and pleasure we have left here together.

As we write this a mailing is being delivered to everyone on the EC mailing list explaining the new conditions for production.

Are you a writer?

Become an Intern

In a program that we're really happy with, LBC hosts a new intern every three months. If you are interested in becoming a close friend with LBC and being exposed to the ideas and personalities around the project and our environs, if you've been wanting time and encouragement to work on or start that awesome anarchist project you've had in mind, feel free to reach out to us at our email address for more information. We are currently looking for interns for the whole of 2020!!!